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The cost of energy is an iceberg — the invoice is only its tip

Edwin Dudziak

28/7/2026

When we talk to customers about energy costs, the discussion almost always begins and ends with the invoice. Yet the invoice describes only one — and by no means the largest — component of what energy really costs an organisation.

The technical effort nobody has counted

Managing energy properly means that somebody is continuously watching prices on the power exchange, weather and renewables output forecasts and the load profiles of the sites, and then turning that data into decisions and making sure they are carried out.

A Schneider Electric report (2026) found that 94% of the companies surveyed do not actively manage their consumption profile — not for lack of data, but because analytical work done by hand costs headcount and time that nobody has usually accounted for.

Billing errors and manual cost allocation

Right next to that sits the verification of billing accuracy. Invoice audits in commercial properties find errors and overcharges in more than 80% of cases, with typical overpayments running to 5–15% of the bill. Allocating costs to tenants by hand alone consumes hours of work, generates disputes and opens the door to abuse.

Property value: the green premium and the "brown discount"

The larger sums are hidden in property value. Knight Frank, on a sample of nearly 6,500 transactions over 11 years, demonstrated a premium of 10–11% in the sale prices of certified buildings (prime offices in central London). Broader studies confirm the direction: JLL puts the rental premium for certified offices at 7.1–11.6%, and in a European survey by Deepki, 40% of pension funds reported losing 21–30% of the value of assets with weak ESG parameters within a year. In a global RICS survey, almost half of respondents already observe a "brown discount" — a markdown for inefficiency.

Regulatory risk and stranded assets

Above all of this, regulatory risk is building. The EPBD directive and national minimum standards are pushing inefficient buildings towards stranded-asset status. In the Netherlands, offices below energy class C may no longer be occupied, and the CRREM methodology makes it possible to calculate when a property will fall off its decarbonisation pathway — for many 1980s office buildings, as early as 2032–2035.

The whole cost in one equation

The sum of these items regularly exceeds what appears on the invoice. That is why energy cost is worth looking at as a whole — with the technical effort, billing accuracy, asset value and regulatory risk in one equation. The difference in the bills is only the tip of the iceberg.

The energy bill is the tip of the iceberg — the full cost also includes the analytical work, errors in billing, the effect on property value and regulatory risk, and the sum of those items regularly exceeds the invoice itself.

Jak to rozwiązujemy

Percee, as an EMOS-class system, accounts for the cost of energy as a whole rather than from the invoice alone: it automates the analytical work (exchange prices, renewables forecasts, load profiles), catches errors and overcharges in billing, and supplies auditable efficiency data that feeds directly into property value and EPBD readiness. At Solwena's customers this approach has added up to more than PLN 50 million of documented savings across more than 50 deployments.